Like what you’re seeing?Stay updated with our daily news digests.

Supermarket sweep and small business

Published
Sept. 28 2015 12:41 PM
By
SME

Supermarket sweep

The past few months has seen a significant shift in the popularity of the big four supermarkets. With recent figures showing that Asda, Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have made significant losses across 2014/2015, demonstrating that there is a trend for consumers to move away from larger stores when doing their weekly shop.

So what’s actually happened?

Across the super-market sector there has been an average 0.2 pre cent drop in the amount of sales made in 2014/2015, although the big four supermarkets found that their sales drop was significantly more than the average.

In total Tesco made a £6.4 billion loss – the largest in the sector’s history. According to market researcher Kantar, the brand also saw sales fall back 1.0 per cent in the 12 weeks to26 April with the rest of Britain's big four – Asda, Sainsbury's seeing declines of 2.2 per cent, 0.2 per cent and 1.1 per cent.

In comparison discount stores such as Iceland, Aldi and Lidl saw an increase in sales as did Waitrose.

A recent customer survey conducted by Which? the above stores ranked highest in terms of customer service and satisfaction. Most recently consumer insights firm Market Force Information asked 6,800 British shoppers about their purchasing habits.

From this they then compiled a loyalty score for each supermarket brand based on customers’ satisfaction and their likelihood to refer that store to others again.

While brands such as Asda, Morrisons and Tesco ranked low on the Composite Loyalty Index (Tesco 30 per cent, Asda 35 per cent and Morrisons 37 per cent) stores such as Waitrose, M&S and Aldi ranked much more highly (67 per cent, 63 per cent, 61 per cent) demonstrating that consumers are looking for a wide range of things when choosing where to shop.

In tomorrow’s instalment we find out the importance of brand integrity…